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Stead Collection

Christina Ellen Stead (1902-1983), the daughter of the leading Australian naturalist David Stead, was born in Sydney. She was educated at Bexley Public School, Sydney Girls’ High School and Sydney Teachers’ College. She worked as a teacher and then as an office worker before going overseas in 1928. In London, where she lived in straitened circumstances, she wrote her first novel Seven poor men of Sydney. She also met William Blech (Blake), an American writer, banker, economist and Marxist. They settled in Paris in 1929, where Stead worked as a translator and as secretary in a bank. In 1937 Stead and Blake moved to the United States. They were active members of the Communist Party. They mostly lived in New York, but also in Santa Fe and Hollywood, where Stead worked as a scriptwriter. In 1947 they returned to Europe and led an itinerant life in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy. They were married in 1952, after Blake was finally granted a divorce by his first wife. In 1953 they settled in England, first in London and then in a cottage on the Foxwarren Estate in Surrey. William Blake died in 1968.

In 1969 Stead visited Australia for the first time in forty years and took up a fellowship at the Australian National University. On her return to England she lived in Surbiton in Surrey. In 1974 she returned to Australia permanently and in the same year was the first recipient of the Patrick White Award. Her last years were mostly spent in Sydney, but she also lived in Canberra and Melbourne.

Ocean of story (1985) - a volume of short stories that appeared posthumously

Christina Stead has never been a popular writer, but she is often linked with Patrick White as one of the outstanding writers in English in the mid-twentieth century. Susan Lever wrote that in their novels both Stead and White ‘move beyond the representational faith of realism, or the seeking of individual difference of modernism, to present a great sweep of disbelief and despair’.

Acquisition

Christina Stead donated her 1959-60 diary to the National Library in 1975. She bequeathed her manuscripts and papers to the Library and they were received from her literary executors, Ron Geering and later Margaret Harris, in a number of instalments between 1984 and 1999. Geering also assisted the Library to obtain letters and other papers from friends of Stead in Britain and the United States. Edith Anderson bequeathed to the Library a long series of letters from Stead and they were received in 2000. The correspondence of Harry Bloom with William Blake and Christina Stead was acquired in 2007. A notebook and letter of Stead were purchased in 2007 from Gilbert Stead, the nephew of Christina Stead.

The papers and tape recordings that Christine Williams assembled while working on her life of Stead were purchased in 1990. The papers of Hazel Rowley relating to her biography of Stead were purchased in 1996.

Description

Manuscripts and personal papers

(i) Papers of Christina Stead

The papers of Christina Stead include manuscripts, typescripts, notes and jottings, correspondence, diaries, personal documents, financial papers, newspaper cuttings, photographs and publications. There are no surviving manuscripts of her early novels, but the collection contains notes and fragments of drafts of For love alone, The man who loved children,House of all nations and The beauties and furies. There are more substantial typescripts of Cotters’ England, The little hotel, Miss Herbert and I’m dying laughing. There are a large number of unfinished writings, stories and fragments. A manuscript of William Blake entitled ‘Imperialism – the last phase’ (1948) is also held.

The diaries date from 1929-40, 1950-51 and 1959-60 and there are also appointment diaries kept in Stead’s later years. The most extensive correspondence is with her husband William Blake (1929-68), her brother David Stead (1929-83), and her American and English friends Ettore and Jessie Rella (1944-82), Harry Bloom (1949-74), Philip and Leah Harvey (1958-83), Norman Rosten (1967-82) and Stanley Burnshaw (photocopies, 1937-82). There are also letters from many Australian writers, mostly dating from the last ten years of her life.

(ii) Letters of Stead

The Library holds a large number of collections containing letters of Stead. They include letters to family members, school friends, personal friends, literary agents and publishers in Britain and the United States, in a few cases dating back to her departure from Australia in 1928. The letters to Australian writers and other Australian friends and acquaintances mostly date from 1969-83.

The Library holds the papers of Christine Williams (MS 8065), the author of Christina Stead: a life of letters (1989). They include a typescript, galley proofs and lists of sources and captions, photographs, and correspondence with the publishers McPhee Gribble and Virago. In addition, there is an extensive correspondence with friends and acquaintances of Stead (1986-89) and correspondence with archives and security organisations in the United States.

The Library also holds the papers of Hazel Rowley (MS 9244), accumulated when she was writing Christina Stead: a biography (1993). They also include typescripts of the book and correspondence with friends of Stead (1986-93). In addition, the collection contains transcripts of interviews, copies of reviews and obituaries, and copies of a large number of letters of Stead held in libraries, archives and private ownership in Britain, America and Australia (1933-83).

Oral history

The Library holds an oral history interview with Christina Stead recorded by Hazel de Berg in September 1969.

In addition, there are 26 cassettes of interviews recorded in England, France and Australia by Christine Williams when she was writing Christina Stead: a life of letters. The interviewees include Sir Hermann Black, Manning Clark, Rosemary Dobson, Ralph Elliott, Margaret Fink, Ruth Hall, Elizabeth Harrower, Leah and Philip Harvey, Stephen Murray-Smith, Elizabeth Riddell, David Stead and Thistle Stead.

Publications and Theses

(i) Correspondence of Christina Stead

Dearest Munx: the letters of Christina Stead and William J. Blake, edited by Margaret Harris, 2005

Brown, Denise, Wakers and sleepers: the dynamics of Christina Stead’s ‘drama of the person’, PhD thesis, University of Tasmania, 1990 [mc G 6596]

Brydon, Diana, Christina Stead, 1987

Forsyth, Ludmilla, Fancy and dream in Stead’s fiction: an examination of Christina Stead’s Seven poor men of Sydney, The beauty and furies, and House of all nations, PhD thesis, La Trobe University, 1984 [mc G 6618]

Organisation

The papers of Christina Stead are held in the Manuscripts Collection at MS 4967 (18 boxes) and MS 8645 (4 boxes). In addition, the correspondence and other papers formerly in the possession of David Stead are held at MS 9581 (5 folders and one folio). A 10 page listing of the papers held at MS 4967 is available in the Manuscripts Reading Room and also on-line at http://nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms4967

The papers of Christine Williams (MS 8065) and Hazel Rowley (MS 9244) are also held in the Manuscripts Collection. The Williams Collection, which is restricted, occupies six boxes and there is a nine page finding-aid at http://nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms8065 The Rowley Collection occupies ten boxes and there is an eight page finding aid at http://nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms9244

The oral history interview with Stead recorded by Hazel de Berg is held in the Oral History Collection at TRC 1/398. There is a 14 page transcript. The 26 interviews recorded by Christine Williams, which are restricted, are held at TRC 2625. At present only four of them have been catalogued.

Related collection

The extensive correspondence of Stead with Stanley Burnshaw, the American poet, critic and editor of the journal New Masses, is held in the Harry Ransom Research Center in the University of Texas at Austin.